Bloodborne & The Old Hunters Collector’s Edition Guides

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Radial Gems can be found in Pthumeru Dungeons and are the most common gem in the game.

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Triangular Gems can be found in Isz Dungeons.

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Waning Gems can be found in Loran Dungeons.

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Circular Gems (typically Pulsing, Warm, or Bloodtinge Gems) only drop from certain enemies in the game, including Bloodlickers and Ritekeepers.

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Droplet Gems are a rare gem type that can fit into any slot, no matter the shape. Besides the ones you find as loot, the only Droplet Gems that drop from enemies are from the Winter Lanterns in the Nightmare Frontier and Nightmare of Mensis. Unless the DLC changes this, Droplet Gems are weaker than the other Gem types, but are a good intermediate gem to use until you can farm higher level Gems.

Notes

There is about a 2% chance for any gem dropped by an enemy to be an abnormal shape from the one that enemy usually drops (ex. Isz Watchers dropping a Waning gem).

Hunter NPC’s, drop the same gem shape regardless of the Dungeon they reside in! Farm the Bone Ash Hunters for Radial, The Cainhurst Hunters for Triangular, and the Logarius Wheel or Beast Claw Hunters for Waning gems.

The Loran Silverbeast has almost the exact same drop list as the Hunters, but can drop up to rank 19 gems (waning, barring abnormal shape drops) while the Hunters only drop up to rank 18.

Dirty: Adds Rapid Poison effect. After enough Poison buildup, the effect will activate, dealing 100 + 10% of your enemy’s max HP in damage. This type of Gem is weak compared to damage gems due to the numerous hits required to inflict it.

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Murky: Adds Slow Poison effect. After enough poison buildup, the effect will activate, causing your enemy to slowly lose HP over a short period of time. This type of Gem is most useful in PvP, but requires several hits to inflict it and has very low damage per second.

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Bloodtinge: Boosts Blood AR by a %. This gem type is used for guns and the Chikage’s transformed mode. Does not affect Visceral damage.

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Heavy: Boosts Strength scaling with a Flat % of your base AR, relative to the Strength stat. The effects of this Gem are weak compared to the % Gems. See explanation in the Gem Formula section of this guide.

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Sharp: Boosts Skill scaling by a Flat % of your base AR, relative to the Skill stat. The effects of this Gem are weak compared to the % Gems. See explanation in the Gem Formula section of this guide.

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Warm: Boosts Bloodtinge scaling by a Flat % of your base AR, relative to the Bloodtinge stat (only applies to weapons with inherent Blood AR). The effects of this gem are weak compared to the % Gems. See explanation in the Gem Formula section of this guide.

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Cold: Boosts Arcane scaling by a Flat % of your base AR, relative to the arcane stat. This effect ONLY boosts Elemental scaling, so it is useless on any weapon without a tied element. The effects of this Gem are weak compared to the % Gems. See explanation in the Gem Formula section of this guide.

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Fire: Boosts Fire AR by a % Changes the damage type of a purely Physical weapon to Fire and causes it to scale with your Arcane stat.

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Bolt: Boosts Bolt AR by a %. Changes the damage type of a purely Physical weapon to Bolt, and causes it to scale with your Arcane stat.

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Arcane: Boosts Arcane AR by a %. Changes the damage type of a purely Physical weapon to Arcane, and causes it to scale with your Arcane stat.

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Pulsing: Causes your character to regenerate HP over time. These gems are useful for passive regeneration on builds that don’t have powerful guns.

Radiant: Reduces your Stamina Cost by a %. One of the least useful Primary Gem effects, but is a useful Secondary effect for high-stamina-usage weapons.

Secondary Effects That Cannot be found as Primary Effects

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Finestrike: Boosts your AR on attacks vs. Open Foes by a %. By “open”, the game means a target that is in the process of attacking. Perhaps the most useful and powerful secondary effect for PvP Gems. Does not affect Visceral damage.

Because of this, stacking the same effects is most beneficial, but these effects don’t always have to be identical. If you were to have a 10% Arcane gem with +10% ATK up vs. open foes, your AR would be 1.1 times your gem-less Arcane AR on normal hits, and 1.21 times your total gem-less AR on attacks vs. open foes (not including the inherent 20% open hit bonus). While gems with pure effects (such as those given by the Scurrying Beasts and the Merciless Watchers) will reliably give you the effect in every applicable situation, they will not always be the most powerful gems.

Let’s compare a 32.6% Blunt Gem from the Watchers and a 28.7% Blunt Gem with +5.6% ATK vs. Open Foes from the Undead Giant. The Watchers’ Gem gives you a constant effect of 1.326 times your Blunt AR. On the other hand, the gem from the Undead Giant only gives you a constant effect of 1.287 times your AR. Neverthless, it has the potential to multiply your Blunt AR by 1.359, and any other inherent Elemental AR on your weapon by 1.056, on open hits. This ideally shows us why the Finestrike secondary effect is perfect for mixed-AR weapons. Looking at the way gems stack, we can reason that the AR difference between these gems is amplified with each additional synergetic effect, as shown below:

Even though the ATK vs. Open Foes effect was 5.6%, the total Physical AR gained from 3 of this effect is 18%. Simultaneously, you get that 18% for any Elemental AR as well.

Do other effects like Rally Potential, Beast/Kinhunter, or Curses stack like this? Yes, so be wary of this and allocate your gems accordingly. Stacking the same curses, such as increased stamina cost, on the same weapon can become problematic if you’re not careful.

Where n represents the number of identical effects for Effect A, and m represents the number of identical effects for effect B. These formulas will only tell you statistical AR, and will not account for any Attack Multipliers such as those given by your weapon’s moveset or by counterhits (aka. attacks vs. open foes).

To ensure accuracy in your calculations, be sure to apply the Formula for each applicable Damage type on your weapon. If a Gem has any +ATK effects, those effects will apply to all attributes on your weapon. This simply means that +ATK on the Burial Blade would be applied to both the Physical and the Arcane AR. On the Stake Driver, +ATK would only affect the primary damage attribute of its respective Element or all Physical attributes (as applicable). Blunt and Thrust AR boosts only affect their respective attribute and have no impact on any other AR type. Flat AR increases from Odd gem effects must be made after all % effects are taken into consideration.

Scaling Gems are similar to % effects, but have some major flaws: they don’t reach their full potential until you hit 99 in the scaling stat that they depend on; they are additive rather than multiplicative; and they only multiply part of your AR.

By comparison, % Gems multiply all AR in their respective category, regardless of your stats.

With 1 percent Gem = 1.272 x 420 = 534.2 AR

With 2 percent Gems = 1.272^2 x 420 = 679.6 AR

As you can see, one % Gem outranks 2 scaling gems. The difference between them only increases when you have less than 99 in your scaling stat. Furthermore, scaling gems only affect 1 stat’s scaling, whereas % gems multiply AR regardless of scaling. For this reason, scaling gems are almost completely useless.

So, now that we have all of the Shapes, Effects, and the Gem Multiplier Formula laid out, what Gems do I want to use? It entirely depends on your stats and the weapons you want to use.

Pure Physical Builds (Strength, Skill, or Strength and Skill): These builds are the easiest to farm for and use the most basic Gems. Tempering is your best bet here. Adept gems can be used to strategically boost the damage of specific attacks that you use most often, such as Thrust for Reiterpallasch and Blunt for the Logarius Wheel. Other gem types can be used, but they will often result in severe limitation of your effectiveness.

Bloodtinge Builds: These builds can use the both Tempering and Bloodtinge Gems to great effect. Tempering covers Blood Attack – as well as Slash, Thrust, and Blunt – because it is considered a Physical attribute. Bloodtinge gems are a little more powerful than Tempering for increasing Blood AR, such as on the Chikage’s transformed state, but greatly limit your style of play.

Arcane Builds: These builds use different Gems from the other 2 build types listed. Elemental Gems allow you to use your Arcane stat scaling on otherwise purely Physical weapons. Nourishing Gems can be used to supplement purely Elemental weapons since Elemental Gems are difficult to farm for compared to the other Gem types. They also help boost the weak Viscerals that Arcane builds often suffer from, and work well for boosting the AR on split-damage weapons such as the Logarius Wheel and Tonitrus. This build type can also use Beasthunter and Kinhunter gems better than any other build because they function in the exact same manner as Nourishing Gems against their respective targets, making their use on split-AR weapons quite effective. The key here is exploiting weaknesses, so bear that in mind when you choose your gems. For more information on this build type, please refer to the Pure Souls Arcane Guide.

Where do I get these Gems? The Chalice Dungeons, of course!

Before getting into glyphs and enemies for gem farming, a word of caution: Eye Runes have been statistically proven to NOT improve the quality of gem drops. Their only use in farming is making an enemy with less than 100% total drop rate drop their items and gems more often. Bosses and some enemies, such as the Labyrinth Madmen and Scourge Beasts have a 100% drop rate of SOMETHING from their drop list, so Eye Runes won’t help. NPC Hunters and Lost Child of Antiquity (Gargoyles), on the other hand, have a low overall drop rate that greatly improves with high discovery.

Tempering

Adept

Nourishing

Common drop from The Merciless Watchers (up to +27.2% Physical with no secondary effect) in RFC Ihyll ag77rinb or pwmf22gu; and RFC Isz 5pwujscd.

Common Drop from The Labyrinth Madmen (up to +21% with a strong secondary effect) in RFC Ihyll pwmf22gu; uncommon in RFC Loran Glyph 25dzpyg3.

Guaranteed drop from Rom the Vacuous Spider (up to +19.5% ATK with a random secondary effect) in RFC Ihyll v5v5fpsd.

Rare drop from the Cainhurst Gargoyles (up to +19.3% ATK with a random secondary effect) in RFC Ihyll pwmf22gu; (Please note that these gems become common with high discovery and are very fast and easy to farm, making the farming of Rom almost obsolete).

Beasthunter/Kinhunter

Bloodtinge

Fire

Rare drop from the Cramped Caskets (up to +27.7% ATK vs Beasts/Kin with a random secondary effect) in Layer 3 (pre-area) of RFC Ihyll exdy2m2t (Please note these become common drops with high discovery; use Eye Runes).

Uncommon drop from the Ritekeepers (aka Fire Witches; sometimes they drop Radial gems) in RFC Ihyll v5v5fpsd. Please see this video for farming the Witches.

Circular Bloodtinge Gems can also be farmed from Bloodlickers found in the dungeons. There is a small chance of them dropping Bloodtinge Gems in the corresponding shapes: Triangular (Isz), Radial (Pthumeru), and Waning (Loran). To get a Bloodlicker to spawn, simply use a visceral attack or backstab in a Chalice Dungeon. Only certain enemies will yield you a Bloodlicker, and only the first Visceral/Backstab on an enemy will be the spawning location of a Bloodlicker. Here is a list of them…

Once you Visceral or Backstab the enemy, leave the area (not the dungeon itself). The Bloodlickers will only appear after you have traveled far enough away or enter another area or layer. After traveling the required distance, come back to farm the bloodlickers that have spawned. Use Eye Runes to boost your Gem drop rate. Please see the following link for an example.

For additional information on finding the BEST GEMS in the game, please refer to the Merciless Watchers Drop List and Labyrinth Madmen Drop List.

Circular Bolt Blood Gem

Credit for the Glyphs goes to ALL of the kind souls who shared them publicly and compiled them. Without their work, this guide would have been severely limited. Thanks also to EMonaghan (TurquoiseWaters) for her assistance in creating this Guide.

On a final note, once in a Blood Moon you get a unique novelty that should not even exist. When this happens, fret not, and consider yourself fortunate that you saw something so rare.